Roke-100 – Tri-County Produce

ROKE FUKUMURA: CELEBRATING 100 YEARS

Ryiokio Fukumura was born in Santa Barbara on November 27, 1922. "Everyone calls me Roke. That's the way it's been since day one in grammar school." He loved sports and, as a student at Santa Barbara High School, he set records in track and starred in baseball as a shortstop for the the Dons in the 1941 CIF Playoffs. "I was short, about 5 foot 3, and everybody on the other team said, 'Look, the Waterboy is coming!' I stole four bases. It was a grand time for us, to win the championship."

POSTON RELOCATION CENTER

World War 2 began, and as soon as Roke graduated, his family was shipped off to an internment camp. "We were in Poston Arizona. We were there three years, in an internment camp. There were three camps. We were in Camp #3. I was just 19, just got out of high school. Everything was volunteer work, so I got railroaded into being a cook. That was my job. We played baseball every night. That was wonderful, to pass the time. When the war was over in 1945, they released us. So I came back to Santa Barbara."

POST WAR

After the war, Roke struggled to put his life back together. " I worked for a farmer for about two years and then went out on my own. I even raised watermelons in Fresno. I was a farmer up at El Sueno Road. The property had lemon and empty land. We farmed that for about four years. I used to ride a big mule and a belgian horse from El Sueno to Walnut Lane because there was no traffic at that time. No cars. So I rode that horse back and forth. That was the only transportation I had. The owner of the market was very surprised, but said, 'Good going'. "

BANANA HOUSE

Roke began working for Harry Bowman at the warehouse that later became Tri-County Produce. "This was a banana house. The owner asked me, 'Come and work for me, will you please?' So I did. We were ripening bananas, processing them, packing and shipping them. The slogan was, 'Yes, We Have Bananas'. " Roke drove a tractor-trailer rig to the wholesalers in Los Angeles nightly at 11pm, selected the produce, loaded the truck and headed back to Santa Barbara, where he waited for it to be unloaded. "I was the only one who drove a semi. I'd stay here to about 11am because the truck had to be unloaded. I put in a lot of hours." The owner died in 1964 and the banana house sold in 1966 to Virgil Eliot and Tri-County Produce officially began as a wholesale produce warehouse.

THE JORDANO'S CONNECTION

Jim Dixon was Produce Manager at Jordano's when he hired Roke as a buyer. "Jim Dixon was the leader of the bunch and he showed most of these workers how to prepare vegetables and display them. He was just super. His father was a farmer in Canada and Jim enjoyed working for him. Then he went on his own, became a grocery clerk and then a manager. He came to the US in 1969, and worked his way up to become manager at Jordano's Produce." Jim left Jordano's in 1985 when he purchased Tri-County Produce. Roke remained at Jordano's for 15 years. “When I retired in 1991, Jim Dixon said, ‘Come and help me’. So I've been here 32 years, since I retired.“